There are several houses that you can visit that were at one time or another occupied by Shakespeare and members of his family. There are different combinations of tickets you can purchase that will allow access to several or all the houses. The basic ticket includes the Birthplace, Halls Croft (his daughter’s home) and New Place (Shakespeare’s own home although now demolished and left as a pretty garden). We will also visit the Church of the Holy Trinity where Shakespeare and some family members are buried.

It is about 30 minutes from Stratford to the Cotswolds village of Chipping Camden for lunch and shopping.

The Cotswolds is an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ totalling about 800 square miles. The very pretty landscape is that of gentle rolling hills through which rivers flow and quintessential English villages are built on. Built of locally quarried limestone, most of the cottages, manor houses and churches in these villages were erected between two and four hundred years ago. After lunch we drive along the single track roads that the tourist buses cannot get down. I will explain how sheep, in particular their wool, made the area very prosperous and talk about agriculture in the UK today as we drive pass many farms. There are plenty of villages that can be included on the tour, for example, Broadway, Snowshill and Stow on the Wold.

It takes about 2 hours to return from the Cotswolds back to central London.